Saga of the Serpent's Skull

Faction Progress Awards

As a part of the Free Captains of the Shackles’ expedition to Saventh-Yhi, the characters can gain special requests, services, bonuses, and other rewards as they gain prestige and grow in rank. This uses the rules set forth in the Faction Guide; if you don’t have it, the quick-and-dirty version exists below, but you should really just buy it because it’s pretty frakkin’ nifty.

Currently, every member of the party has 10TPA.

Prestige Award

Your character’s Prestige Award (PA) is an abstract way to track your renown and reputation within a faction.

PA is gauged similar to hit points, with two variables to track: Total and Current Prestige Award (TPA and CPA respectively). In a nutshell, TPA represents your total faction hit points in terms of prestige (duh) or rank; CPA represents your current faction hit points in terms of clout and pull within the organization, which depletes when you spend it for faction support, goods, or services.

TPA

TPA represents your character’s overall reputation within a faction: a cross between their rank, their fame, and how well-regarded they are within the faction. It never goes down, only going up—-unless you screw your faction over somehow: killing other members, stealing, supporting opposed factions—-and is a benchmark of how high the character has climbed within the faction.

Higher levels of TPA may provide you with rank, more duties, and benefits; they also allow you to purchase magic items and equipment directly from the faction. However, most goods and services are acquired by spending your CPA.

CPA

CPA represents how much influence a character currently has within the organization: favors and debts owed, goodwill, political influence that can be swung in your favor, equipment bonuses, influencing faction resource allocation, etcetera.

Unlike TPA, CPA is spent to acquire goods, services, and duties from the organization: spent as in goes down. Most often, your CPA is usually lower than your TPA; it can never be higher than your TPA. It reflects the fluid nature of your strength in the faction: pull too many favors, or require too much of the faction’s resources, and you’re not going to get as much support in the future, by simple virtue of using up all the debts and bonuses owed.

When CPA is spent, it’s permanently gone; the CPA you used to have doesn’t regenerate or refresh, though you can gain more simply by gaining more PA. It cannot be spent in combat; theoretically it can only be spent once per session, but I see that more as a guideline: you can spend it any time you’d logically have the chance to approach whoever the hell it is you need favors from.

Earning Prestige

Earning prestige is simple: back your faction up, perform missions for the faction, advance the faction’s goals, pull favors or offer support. This isn’t automatic but routine support. Just showing up isn’t enough; you have to promote the organization, as well as perform duties and functions within it. In some cases, this will be a direct mission — find the way to Saventh-Yhi and get there first — while in other times, it’s more of a general thing — freeing slaves if you’re an Eagle Knight, finding ruins and writing a Chronicle if you’re a Pathfinder, etc.

The Shackles Pirates: Plunder and Freedom!

The Shackles Pirates operate with the mores and goals of a flotilla of allied pirate ships on the grand scale of a nation-stae… probably because they are. Every pirate serves a captain of their choosing in a loose democracy; the organization attacks and plunders any ship they can, seeking to maximize loot potential, damn the risks. Leaders are fiercely independent, held accountable to no-one but themselves.

The pirates respect power, skill, luck, and daring: showing you have one of these skills will surely increase your fame with the pirates.

Prestige Award Rewards:

In general, if it’s not listed here, 1 CPA can be spent to gain the equivalent of ~375gp worth of services.

Free Captains PA Rewards:

1 CPA: Arrange oceangoing transport to or from any port where the pirates can land, or to an unsettled coastal location within the pirates’ territory.1 CPA: Hide the character or an ally for 1 month on a pirate ship. Because the ship is mobile and passes near the Eye of Abendego, attempts to scry on or teleport to the hidden character are difficult (+ 5 bonus on the target’s saving throw bonus to resist scrying and location-determining spells; teleport attempts are two familiarity categories worse).1 + CPA: Obtain a treasure map to a dead captain’s “legendary” buried treasure. The treasure’s value is at least equal to the CPA value spent to acquire the map. The source of the map makes no guarantee as to any treasure guardians, slight inaccuracies in the map, or rival treasure seekers with the same map.2 CPA: Arrange oceangoing transport to or from any port in Avistan or Garund, or to an unsettled coastal location outside the pirates’ territory.10 TPA, 1 CPA: Intercept a cargo ship at a specific location, seizing the goods and holding them nearby. Add + 1 CPA to the cost to spare the lives of the targeted people. If competing individuals are interested in the same shipment, whoever spends the most CPA ends up in control of it.13 CPA: Undergo a ritual based on barely understood ancient water magic that gives the character primitive gills, allowing him to breathe water as an extraordinary ability. After 10 minutes of using the gills, the character is fatigued. After 20 minutes of using the gills, the character is exhausted. Extensive use of the gills tends to give the character a gill-man-like appearance, and some eventually take on fish-like physical traits.13 CPA: Undergo a ritual based on barely understood ancient water magic that gives the character low-light vision. Most recipients of this ability eventually find that their eyes enlarge and become fish-like.20 TPA: Purchase or upgrade magical weapons from the following list at a 10% discount: anarchic, humanoid-bane (any), dagger of venom, dancing, defending, javelin of lightning, luck blade, mace of terror, mighty cleaving, rapier of puncturing, shock, shocking burst, sword of subtlety, thundering, trident of fish command, trident of warning, wounding.20 TPA: Purchase or upgrade magical armor from the following list at a 10% discount: energy resistance (electricity), plate armor of the deep, slick (all), wild. This discount is only available for light and medium armor (both normal and masterwork quality), with the exception of plate armor of the deep.20 TPA: Purchase magic items from the following list at a 10% discount: bottle of air, cloak of the manta ray, feather token (anchor, swan boat), folding boat, gloves of swimming and climbing, horn of fog, necklace of adaptation, orb of storms, pearl of the sirines, ring of climbing, ring of energy resistance (minor electricity), ring of jumping, ring of swimming, wind fan.20 TPA: Purchase a second-hand but safe sailing vessel at a 10% discount.25 + CPA: Obtain a small estate in Port Peril, Quent, or Eleder. The estate covers 1 acre and includes a comfortable house, pleasant furnishings, and a few 1st-level commoners to tend the estate. There’s a bunch of other rules and stuff that we’ll deal with if anyone does this.30 TPA, 1 CPA: Gain the title “captain” and a loyal crew of one leveled pirates, such as a 5th-level first mate and 3rd-level storm mage, again, with a bunch of rules I’m too lazy to post here since you’re only 6th level.

General Services Rewards:

The services listed below are per-week, and include level-equivalent gear and living expenses as part of their total CPA cost. For double the CPA, these services last for an entire month.

1CPA: Mounts (light riding horse, camel, mule, or pony) for the PC and up to 1 companion/level
1CPA: Boat travel (freshwater/coastal transport for the PC and up to 10 others; includes crew of 4 2nd level experts)
1CPA: Work detail of 50 2nd-level commoners
1CPA: Skilled craftsman (expert of 1/2 the faction member level)
2CPA: Bodyguard (warrior of 1/2 the faction member level)
2CPA: Ship travel (deep water transport for the PC and up to 20 others; includes a crew of 10 2nd level experts)
2CPA: Squad of 10 2nd-level warriors
2CPA: Combat trained mounts (warhorses or riding dogs) for the PC and up to 1 companion/level

The services listed below are miscellaneous one-time services.

CPA Cost/Benefit
1CPA: +4 to one skill check
1CPA: Purchase a single item worth 375 gp**
1CPA: Wealthy cost of living for 1 month
2CPA: Purchase a single item worth 750 gp**
2CPA: Extravagant cost of living for 1 month
5CPA: Retrieval of a dead body to a faction-controlled location

The Cost of living things cover a single month and are detailed on page 405 of the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook.

Characters can’t spend multiple PA for more items costing more than 750 gp.

Spellcasting

You can requisition specific spells from faction spellcasters by spending the requisite amount of CPA. These are one-time uses of the spell, but are guaranteed to work, and require no other expenditure than time and CPA; there’s a bunch more, going up to 77CPA for True Resurrection. We’ll worry about those when you have some CPA to spend.

TPA and Item Costs

Your faction can provide you with magic items, weapons, and equipment for sale, either by manufacturing it directly or having someone go out and fetch it. (Of course, you still have to pay for its GP cost — this is not a requisition, but a request to stock the damn thing — but you have the benefit of getting the exact equipment you wanted. And it doesn’t cost any CPA. And the faction won’t ask for it back at inopportune times, because it’s yours.)

This is limited by your TPA: more rank in your faction means more expensive items can be built, bought, or stolen for your faction to sell to you. The chart below lists the maximum cost of an item your faction will hunt down for you. For example, if you have 25 TPA, you can request an item of up to 8,000gp value.